In 2005, the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) initiated an LTE research working group to research and design the next generation network of the 3.9 G (evolved 3 G) evolved from the 3rd generation mobile communication technology, with the overall design target of a concise system structure, a higher transmission speed, a low comprehensive cost, economical and excellent backward compatibility, flexible utilization of frequency spectrum and flexible service support capacity.
In order to utilize resources of a mobile network efficiently, the 3GPP puts forward a multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) to provide a point-to-multipoint data service that a data source sends data to a plurality of users in a mobile network, thereby realizing the share of network resources and improving the utilization rate of network resources, especially, precious air interface resources. The MBMS is a technology for transmitting a shared network resources from a data source to a plurality of targets, the MBMS defined by the 3GPP can realize not only the multicast and the broadcast of a full-text message at a low speed but also the multicast and the broadcast of a multimedia service at a high speed, so a plenty of video, audio and multimedia services are provided. In an LTE network, the MBMS technology is known as an evolved MBMS (E-MBMS).
As illustrated in FIG. 1, in a frequency division duplex (FDD) mode and a time division duplex (TDD) mode of an LTE system, wireless frames are divided into MBSFN frames (the frames in FIG. 1 filled by grids) and non-MBSFN frames i.e. unicast frames (the blank frames in FIG. 1); part sub-frames of the MBSFN frames adopt MBSFN transmission mode, namely, the sub-frames in each MBSFN frame are further divided into MBSFN sub-frames (the sub-frames in FIG. 1 filled by oblique lines) and non-MBSFN sub-frames, i.e. unicast sub-frames (the sub-frames in FIG. 1 filled by dots), and all the sub-frames in a non-MBSFN frame adopt an unicast transmission mode instead of the MBSFN transmission mode.
In order to improve the resources utilization rate of the E-MBMS, a carrier frequency may support one or more MBMS transport channels (MCHs), in this case this specific MCH-distributed physical resource may adopt a specific pattern of sub-frames, which is known as an MCH sub-frame allocation pattern (MSAP). A plurality of MBMS services may be mapped to the same MCH, and the MBMS services included by the MCH belong to the same MBSFN area.
In the MBSFN transmission mode, the reference signals inserted in an MBSFN sub-frame rather than common cell-specific reference signals are adopted for a signal estimation, the adopted reference signals employ the MBSFN transmission mode, that is, all the cells participating in the MBSFN mode adopt the identical reference signals, which are known as MBSFN reference signals; and in a wireless frame, MBSFN sub-frames employ the MBSFN reference signals.
In an LTE network employing FDD or TDD, it is needed for a mobile terminal to know whether each wireless frame is an MBSFN frame and whether each sub-frame in each MBSFN frame employs the MBSFN, that is, a UE needs to know whether or not each sub-frame is an MBSFN sub-frame, so that the mobile terminal can perform a channel estimation on each sub-frame by adopting the MBSFN reference signals or the cell-specific reference signals. Therefore, evolved universal terrestrial radio access network (E-UTRAN) needs to inform the mobile terminal of the foregoing information of each wireless frame and each sub-frame via a system broadcast message, and the mobile terminal needs to know whether each wireless frame is an MBSFN frame and whether each sub-frame is an MBSFN sub-frame so as to perform a channel estimation on each sub-frame.
The prior art has not yet provided a method for configuring multicast/broadcast over a single frequency network frame in a system-resources-saved manner.